They say that conflict is the source of all drama. Is friction a sort of conflict? It’s used that way in psychology parlance, I think. Is life drama? I’m not sure that’s true, but it sounds moderately profound. You can certainly use friction to support life, Tom Hanks style, so I guess one could argue that friction is a source of life… Sorry, conflict is a source of drama.
Anyway...
Add some heat and solid matter becomes fluid, and wonderful things can be created in this state. Like, for example, silicate mixed with gem dust, held together inside a mesh of textile, forming a semi-solid, semi-fluid, and very smooth surface, so very susceptible for an enchanter like me to work with.
Yes, I was now working with both solid, and semi-solid material. Just like myself. I consisted of mostly liquid and semi-solid material, but I was different in one way: parts of me were completely solid, for I did consider my prosthetics to be part of me now. Sure, I could remove them and switch them out for other things, but they were still me, and their completely solid state helped me in this situation:
It took virtually no energy for me to stand up straight in a fairly still position for an extended period of time. I could just lock my prostheses in place and lean on them. The only thing left after that was to keep my head upright, and it was absolutely vital for me to keep it steady, and in the correct position.
Or so Rarity insisted.
“Darling, you must have some wishes,” she insisted, peering at me over her strange, old secretary glasses.
There was a bit of a conga line of experimentation going on. I was experimenting on Armor, Rarity was experimenting on me, and Sweetie Belle was experimenting in Rarity’s kitchen.
Armor had been transferred back from the Crystal Empire to Canterlot, and I’d promptly requested to have him helping me with my research. He was currently with us in Carousel Boutique, in his civvies. Or skivvies, if you like.
“Well, the only high society, uh, equipage, that I’ve seen is the stuff you’ve made, and I think the prettiest gala dress was Twilight’s,” I said, as I floated my experimental lens in front of my eye, inspecting it closely.
“What do you think, Armor?” Rarity said.
Armor opened his left eye, the one currently not covered by an opaque lens, to inspect the mannequins one more time. He wasn’t allowed to move away from in front of me though.
“They’re all stunning, Miss Rarity,” he said. “Though if you’ll trust a soldier’s fashion sense, I think Twilight’s or yours would fit Gabe best.”
“You’re supposed to be blind,” I said.
“Sorry. I’ll be blind. Promise,” he said, and closed his eye again, leaving only his right one open, which was covered by an inky black lens.
“Explain to me again, Gabrielle dear,” Rarity said, in a confused tone, as she draped another piece of wonderful-feeling cloth over me. “What exactly are you doing right now?”
“Yeah, I wanna know too,” Sweetie Belle called, from inside the kitchen.
“I’m figuring out how to make prosthetic eyes,” I said, evenly. “And I’ve put an opaque lens over Armor’s eye, blinding him in a way, and now I’m going to put another lens on top of that one, which I’m trying to get to ‘restore’ sight to him.”
“And I’ve been ordered to not have a problem with this,” Armor said, in overdone happiness.
The Belle sisters tittered.
“But you said earlier that a lens like that won’t work for you.” Sweetie Belle said, peering out from the kitchen. “Why aren’t you making something for yourself?”
“Because there’s a blind mare in Canterlot who still has her eyes,” I said. “I still have my left one, I’m fine. I’ll make one eventually though.”
“Can’t you put one over the fake eye you have right now?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“No,” I said, a bit disappointed. “Seems like if you get a surface of, say, an eye-shaped gem or lens, to start responding to electromagnetic radiation, getting it to then ‘talk’ to the optic nerve is different from getting it to talk to the retina.”
Rarity’s eyes shifted as she caught up with what I was saying. “Sooo, that must mean that it’s harder to talk to the optic nerve, or you’d just do that, regardless of whether somepony had the surface of their eyes damaged or missing altogether.”
“Yes, strangely enough,” I said. “I’m probably just missing something. It’s funny, I used to work with radiation, but apparently that doesn’t translate perfectly into knowing exactly how the eye works, but I’ll figure it out eventually.”
“Well, considering your track record, I’d say so,” Armor said, confidently.
“Thank you,” I said, and smiled at the blinded soldier in front of me.
Rarity shook her head clear of talks about radiation and ocular injuries, and went back to what she did best. “And you most certainly deserve your reward, so I really need you to stay still so that I can make your dress as magnificent as possible.”
“Alright, alright,” I said, correcting the position of my head again. “I’m putting it in now, Armor.”
“Right,” he said, completely at ease. That’s the wonderful thing about experimenting with Armor’s eyes. He’s a pegasus, and so they’re not really more sensitive than any other part of his hide.
I magicked the lens onto his covered eye. He didn’t flinch. I had actually spent a bit of time poking him lightly there, just for fun.
“Hmm. There’s something,” Armor said, slowly. “Like a big, blurry light.”
I felt like putting my hoof to my chin, but Rarity cleared her throat at me. “That sounds like… you know, when people are blinded, but they can still tell whether if there’s light around them,” I said.
“Yyyes. A bit like that, I think,” Armor said.
Rarity and Sweetie Belle had now stopped what they were doing, and I had both of their attention now.
“The inner lens is completely opaque,” I noted. “I would call this… a limited success, I guess.”
“I’d say so,” Armor said, then put his hoof in front of his eye. “Yes, I can tell whether it’s light or dark.”
I couldn’t help but let out a triumphant chuckle, as I magicked out the lenses from Armor’s eye, and deposited them in a small case. “Heh! Good work, Rarity.”
“Oh, think nothing of it,” she said, with a satisfied smile, as she went back to adjusting the cloth covering me. “I’m just glad I could help.”
What we were referring to was Rarity’s contribution to this experiment. She had provided a kind of textile with some incredible properties: It could absorb and hold a fine gem dust mixed into a sort of silicon-like batter, which could then coalesce into a material that was both incredibly smooth and pliable. It was just like a silica lens in that regard, and amazingly enough, it could also “breathe”. It was from this new material which the lenses I was currently working on were made.
“Would you like me to mention this to the institute when we go to Canterlot?” I asked.
“I… think I would like that, yes,” Rarity said. “I’m not sure that magic researchers would care where your materials come from, but I appreciate the gesture.”
“You never know,” I said.
“Sis,” Sweetie Belle called, from the kitchen. “The porridge isn’t done, but I think the stuff in the bottom is starting to fry.”
When those words registered, Armor and I opened our mouths at the same time, but stopped ourselves from saying anything. Rarity just groaned. “Sweetie, dear, just stir it. More than once.”
“Oh, okay,” Sweetie Belle said.
“You should get her to practice on mushrooms,” Armor said. “You can fry them in the pan for ages, and they’re still good.”
“Same with chicken,” I said. “You gotta be careful with a lot of meat, but chicken can take a beating.”
Rarity closed her eyes, and looked like she held something back.
“Gabe, that’s gross,” Sweetie Belle said.
“Not really,” I said. “Although if you buy it frozen, you’re probably gonna get a bunch of protein leaking out of it that looks like egg white. Some people think that’s gross.”
I had finished my sentence whether I wanted to or not, according to Rarity’s blue magic aura holding my mouth shut.
“And you’re not even flinching,” Rarity said to Armor.
“I’m used to it,” he stated.
I chuckled behind my closed mouth.
“I suppose it’s appropriate,” he continued, with a hint of dejection. “Since I can apparently digest meat now.”
Rarity looked at him uncertainly. “How?” she asked.
Armor seemed to catch up with what he was revealing.
“Oh, uh,” he said, and looked at me nervously.
‘Well, I suppose it’s not a secret, or at least it can’t stay that way for long.’
“Mm m-mm,” I mumbled at him, and shrugged.
Rarity looked at him in curiosity, as did Sweetie Belle, poking her head out of the kitchen.
“Well, doc says that I’ve gotten foreign enzymes in me, which apparently comes from, well, Gabe,” he said.
Rarity and Sweetie Belle stared at us for a moment, before Rarity smiled mischievously at me. “You like a stallion in uniform then?”
He did look cool in it. “Mm mm,” I conceded.
“It’s from sharing food!” Armor quickly amended, which apparently sapped a lot of Rarity and Sweetie Belle’s interest. “It also gave me stomach aches.”
‘Well, we have, so that’s entirely possible,’ I admitted to myself.
“Hold on,” Sweetie Belle said. “Does that mean that Rumble has gotten stomach-aches too?”
I looked at her in deep confusion. ‘Rumble? Where would he have gotten— unless she means that…’ I turned to Armor, and looked him suspiciously in the eye. ‘... Have you been making out with Rumble?’
—
“Alright, forward march,” I said, from atop Armor’s back.
“You’d better not walk me down into the river,” he commented.
“I’m on your back,” I said. “If you fall into the river, so do I. Do you see anything?”
He peered around extra hard with his lens-covered eye, my eyepatch covering his other one. “It looks a bit like when you’re underwater, only the water is grey, and I can still see the shimmers. It’s mostly when I move around.”
“Hmm,” I puzzled. That sounded promising. “It might be a bit early to speculate, but maybe we’re getting close. Obviously, the lens is talking to your nerves, but it seems like it’s just saying, ‘Okay, here’s the light.’ Maybe I haven’t made it understand to uuh… talk in different colors, rather than just ‘light’.”
“Yeah, that might be it,” Armor said.
I nodded to myself. It sounded plausible.
“Is it uncomfortable?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said. “I mean, it’s a bit disturbing to not see anything, but other than that, no.”
“Aww,” I cooed, placing my chin on the top of his head, then comfortingly petted his neck. “I’m not gonna mess with you,” I said, sincerely. “Promise.”
A small ache started building in my chest, as it had for several nights recently. I’ve always been able to rely on my rationality, but no matter how much I asked it what to do about this, it didn’t seem to provide a clear answer.
Were Armor and I friends, or were we something more? Could we be more?
I let out a small, forlorn sigh, and Armor angled his head a bit, in vain, as I was resting on it.
Before he could say anything however, a familiar voice interrupted him
“Studded Armor. So you’re back in Ponyville.”
Armor turned his head towards the source of the voice. “Nurse Redheart,” he said, angling his head towards her voice. “Nice to see you again… or, you know.”
“Hey, Redheart,” I said, grateful for something to distract me, and yet not.
Redheart was approaching our secluded little practicing-area by the river with a lunch box in her mouth, and tilted her head when she got a good look at his face. “What are you two up to?” she asked, as she set the lunch box down.
“Researching, apparently,” Armor said, as he lifted my eyepatch from his right eye to look at her properly.
“Oh,” she said, and nodded, a bit in relief. “So you’ve stopped using yourself as a test subject, then?” she asked me.
“Not really,” I said. “I just didn’t seem to be making any progress with my eye, so I switched to a prosthetic lens. I figured that would be easier.”
“Is it?” Redheart asked.
“Well, it apparently does something,” I said.
“I’m seeing a shifting white light,” Armor said, then slowly looked around demonstratively. “Which is something other than black.”
“Exactly,” I said to Redheart. “So while it’s not ready yet, if this is an Apollo rocket, I’m not quite ready to launch, but at least I’ve propelled something rocket-shaped vaguely in the direction I want.”
“Apollo rocket?” she asked, confused.
“Ah it’s uh,” I started, and put my hoof to my chin. “I kinda don’t wanna give the short version, considering how much I respect what those people managed to do, but it was a project where humans managed to launch themselves into space.”
“... Why?” she asked.
“To explore, of course,” I said, smiling. “To see if they could. Test the limits of knowledge and all that good stuff.”
Redheart looked at me in silence for a moment. Armor might’ve too, if I wasn’t still leaning against his head.
“Humans are crazy,” Redheart said after a while, shaking her head.
“And proud of it,” I said.
“I guess it explains where you get your crazy ideas from,” she said. “Just don’t neglect your friends. You don’t wanna miss out.”
“You could say I’m making more friends,” I pointed out. “Blueberry, Sunlit, and Rider liked what I did, and now I’m doing more. The lenses are for this guardsmare in Canterlot, and Scrap Armor made a gryphon hand that I’m gonna give to this eagless during that guest lecture I got the last time I was there.”
“Ah yes, that,” Redheart said. “Alright, but don’t neglect your friends here in Ponyville.”
“Hardly. We have movie nights, I hang out with the crusaders, me and Lyra jam together,” I counted.
“Not to mention your classmate who has a crush on you,” Redheart said.
I gave the most ready answer I could to that: a blank stare.
That threw me, and threw me far.
“Whhaa...?” I managed, somehow. Then, without really thinking, I blurted out, “Crush? No one has a crush on me.”
“Sure they do,” Redheart stated confidently.
“Uh, alright,” I stated, my mind involuntarily doing backflips. “Who is it?”
“Do you really want to know?” Redheart asked, fluttering her eyes at me.
“Sure,” I said, not really thinking.
“Rumble,” she said, smiling. “Rumble has a crush on you.”
“... What?”
“You heard me,” she said.
“... What?”
I wasn’t resting on Armor’s neck anymore, I was just sitting listlessly on his back.
“Eh, Gabe?” he asked.
I finally understood what Redheart was going for. “Rumble doesn’t have a crush on me,” I said, kind of appreciating the joke.
“He does,” Redheart said, her smile fading a bit.
“... No he doesn’t,” I said.
“He does,” she insisted.
I paused and took a good look at Redheart’s now completely straight face.
There was no hint of humor left there.
“I, ah, uh, I… why?” I asked, stunned.
That’s when the humor came back in a hurry. Redheart laughed without reservations, and even Armor chuckled a bit incredulously at me with a raised eyebrow.
“You’re serious?” Redheart asked, punctuating the question with a little after-laugh.
I tried saying something to the effect of, “Well, yeah,” but I ended up just looking like a frustrated fish.
“You’ve never had a colt like you before?” she asked.
“I... I... I dunno,” I said. “I don’t think so. No colts, b-but back in school, someone said that a boy liked me once, or twice, b-but it was just a rumor. I think.”
Redheart and Armor just stared at me in amused disbelief.
“Somehow I doubt that,” Redheart said.
“I told you you were pretty, Gabe,” Armor said, and ruffled my mane with his wing. “You’re cool, too. Pegasi like that.”
‘Oh, thank– Wait, is Rumble just interested in me because of my looks? Hold on, why would you say that? Do you have ulterior motives? Don’t you like me? Do you want me to be interested in Rumble because you don’t want to dump me directly? And you, Redheart. Do you don’t want me and Armor to be a thing? Is he too old for me? Do you want him for yourself!?’
Realizing how agitated my breathing was becoming, I closed my eyes, and took deep, slow breaths.
‘Emotions. I hate you so much sometimes.’
“Calm down, Gabe,” Redheart said, and put her hoof on my shoulder, leaning up to me. “It’s not the end of the world.”
She and Armor were looking at me with worry scrawled all over their faces.
‘Rumble likes me? How many times has he tried telling me? Have I just come across as aloof? Have I strung him along without meaning to? No way. Why would he be interested in me? But Redheart says that he is. Have I hurt his feelings? Have I– Oh, I’m not cut out for this. Why couldn’t he like Sweetie Belle, or Dinky, or even Redheart?’
“Gabe?” Armor asked. “Are you okay?”
“No, I feel terrible,” I mumbled. “Are you sure?” I asked Redheart.
“Yes,” she said, rolling her eyes, before her expression fell again. “Does it bother you that much?”
I took a moment to purge all the fears and insecurities that had reared their ugly heads so suddenly. ‘I’m a scientist. This irrationality is beneath me... But what if– Oh shut up!’
“Well, I didn’t know!” I protested, then hung my head. “I’m, I’m not, I… oh, now I’m just trying to think back if I’ve hurt him.”
“You care that much for him?” she asked, a small smile growing at the side of her mouth.
“Well, I , I’m, uh,” I started. ‘Stop messing with me, okay!? Just because you’re an emotions expert doesn’t mean that everyone is too!’ “I don’t know. If he’s feeling bad because of me then… well, then it’s my fault. What should I do about that? Ugh, why don’t people just tell each other about these things?”
Redheart just tilted her head and inspected me. “Gabe, you are either the most boring or the most interesting young mare in Equestria,” she said. “Of course ponies don’t outright say that. What if they’re rejected? Haven’t you ever told anypony you like them?”
‘Of course I– Wait… have I? Yes I have.’
I cast a glance at Armor, and when he answered in kind, we quickly looked away from each other. Like in traffic, bright red lights warned us that we should back off.
“Oh, don’t bother,” Redheart tittered. “I can see it plain as day.”
“Uhm,” Armor uhm’ed, and scratched his neck with a hoof.
“Well, it’s a bit unconventional,” Redheart said “But you haven’t done anything untowards, as I understand it.” She turned to me instead. “He’s a nice catch,” she said, with a small smile. “I might’ve tried reeling him in myself.”
I don’t know what I stopped myself from saying at first, as her words caught up with me. “Is… are you trying to make me jealous? That’s a strange way to show disapproval.”
“See? Now you’re getting the hang of it,” she said, and ruffled my mane with her forehoof.
“Mm, alright, alright,” I said, waving her hoof away.
“So, you’re going to Canterlot again to fix ponies up?” she asked, as she picked up her lunch box in her mouth.
“And a gryphon,” I said.
“Yeah, you better get him away from me,” Redheart said, and shot a fiercely blushing Armor a half-lidded look. “Have a nice trip.”
She walked away from us, and ran her tail across Armor’s muzzle, glancing back at him as she did.
“Hey!” I shouted at her, feeling that someone had to do it (even as I was observing in detail this exciting new possibility that tails offered). I hugged Armor’s neck protectively and waved my hoof at Redheart. “Mine!”
Armor was just standing there, developing a new pattern on his coat.
—
“Do you have everything?” Spike asked, from the corridor outside my room.
“Uhm, yes,” I said, packing down the last parchment with formulas in my saddlebag. “The only thing I don’t have is that gryphon meat substitute, but I can get some more of that in Canterlot. Good thing too, I’m almost out.” After my mild vandalism in the post office, I felt I shouldn’t really weigh them down with even more to do, until they were fully up and running.
“Are you bringing your guitar?” Spike asked, as he walked in with my new dress in a paper package with a pink band tying it together.
I was actually getting kind of exciting about trying it out, and started feeling a little bad about being so absorbed in my work at Rarity’s. I had probably come across as aloof. ‘Ooh, I wonder what Armor will think of it… okay, no. No more sighing and longing until I figure this out.’
“Yes, I am,” I said, and gestured to the hard-case leaning against the wall. “It’s right there.”
“Oh, okay,” he breathed. “Good. It’s a bit creepy when it starts playing on its own.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “The power of Rock’n’Roll wouldn’t hurt you. You’re a dragon, it’s on your side.”
“Uh, thanks,” he said, “I guess.”
“Oh, and speaking of Rock ’n’ Roll,” I said, and fished Scrap’s latest creation out of my saddlebag. “What do you think about this?”
It was a gryphon’s foreleg in metal, an almost full forearm ending with a large, taloned hand. Chromed and gleaming in the sunlight streaming in from the window. It looked like something from a Heavy Metal album cover circa 1987.
Though the effect was diminished a bit from the bottle corks stuck on the end of the talons, which kept them from tearing up my fancy saddlebags.
“Awesome,” Spike breathed. “You think he can make some sort of armor for me that looks like that?”
“No doubt. Also, check this out,” I said, and unscrewed the top of the foreleg, making it shorter. “It’s modular. I haven’t met the recipient, so I don’t know how large it should be, but I can adjust it like this.”
“Ooh, that’s really smart,” Spike said.
“Yeah. Scrap’s idea, of course. Let’s just hope that the talons aren’t too different from her arcanomorphic field, or we’re gonna have to reforge it.”
“Whose field?” Spike asked.
“Uh, the eagless who’s getting it,” I said.
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Well, are you ready to go?”
I didn’t have time to answer before Twilight poked her head in from the corridor. “You ready to go, Gabe?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” I said.
“Good,” Twilight said. “Because, uhm, the train leaves in about five minutes.”
I glanced out the window, seeing where the sun was positioned in the sky, and quickly shoved the gryphon prosthesis into my saddlebag. “Whoops! Bye, guys,” I said, as I galloped out from the room, and leapt down from the second floor ledge, onto an unsuspecting Armor’s back.
“Giddy-up, private, we’re in a hurry,” I said, to an instinctively rearing Armor.
“Say hi to Inkwell for me!” Twilight called, from up the stairs.
“Will do!” I shouted, as Armor took off at top speed out the door.
—
“Ah, on the road again,” I said, as Armor set me and my luggage down on a bench inside the train car. “Or, you know, tracks. Good work, Armor.”
Armor was taking slow, steadying breaths, as he sat himself down on the padded bench. “Thank you, ma’am,” he breathed, jokingly.
“Heh. So, you’re up for being a test subject some more, or would you like me to play something?” I asked.
“Either’s fine,” he said. “You need to make the lenses for Sandstone work, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said, and started digging out my notes and materials. “You just lay back and let auntie Desrochers do her work.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, and laid himself on his back opposite me, letting one wing lazily splay open, while idly holding the other out so he could preen the upper half of it.
I picked up from where I had left off, finishing up my notes from what I had learned when we were out and about, and started trying out some new things on one of the test lenses.
Armor stopped preening, and just laid completely relaxed, as I inserted the lens into his eye and started working.
“Okay,” I said, after a while. “Do you see anything?”
“Kinda, yeah,” he said, and gestured with his hoof in front of him. “There’s this… shimmer.”
“Promising. I’m not sure how to get the lens to communicate with you, so I’ve tweaked the formula to inspect your nervous system to try and at least partially figure out for itself how to solve the issue.”
“Oh. That sounds clever,” he said, holding still. “At least I think it does.”
“Thank you.” I said, and gave him a quick nuzzle as a reward. “Another bit of inspiration from human technology. We’ll give it some time and see what it can figure out.”
“Alright.”
“... Hey, Armor,” I said, after a while, a bit cautiously.
“Yeah?”
“... I’m too young for you, aren’t I?”
He looked straight ahead with his blank lens for a moment, before opening his other eye, and looking at me with a bit of worry and uncertainty.
“I,” he started, before letting out a sigh, and just looking sad. “I don’t know.”
I let out a sigh of my own, my ears drooping along with Armor’s. “I don’t know either.”
We stayed like that for a moment, before he slowly raised his wing, and brushed his primaries against my cheek, and I couldn’t help but smile and lean into it a bit.
He raised his head, and looked around the car at the benches, empty except for a sleeping mare on the far side, before leaning back again and looking into my eye. “You’re a wonderful and beautiful young mare, and you deserve a wonderful pony,” he said.
“I already know one,” I said, turning the cheese up to eleven, smiling a bit ruefully.
He smiled back at me, and stroked my cheek with his primaries.
“... Gabe,” he said. “I think your lens is working now.”
—
It was a terraced house, of sorts. It was slightly flattened from what you might expect from turn-of-the-century western European style. The houses were shorter than I was used to seeing on Earth, but the plot of land with the gardens and greenhouses were larger. There were also greenery rather than just grass, especially concerning the house we were standing in front of.
I knocked on the door in front of us. We hadn’t walked by the palace to unload my stuff yet, so Armor was weighted down with my dress, some of my research materials, and my guitar— the only other pony than myself I trusted it with. Sure, I had gotten Scrap to enchant it so that I could drop both it and my harmonica from the top of Canterlot castle and it wouldn’t even leave a dent (and the sound remained unchanged), but still.
I just carried the rest of my research material and the gryphon talon in my saddlebag.
“Just a minute!” a woman, mare, called from the other side of the door.
A set of hooffalls approached, and the door opened, revealing a creamy brown-coated earth pony mare with a blonde mane and tail in that typically messy but lustrous style, staring blankly ahead of herself with milky eyes.
“Good… afternoon, I think,” she said, completely unabashed, and a small smile on her face. “Who is it?”
Armor and I glanced at each other, and I held out my hoof invitingly for him.
“Uhm, Corporal Sandstone,” he said. “I’m Private Armor, royal guard, fifth air unit.”
Sandstone angled her ears towards Armor as he spoke, concentration evident on her face. “Yes, that does sound like you,” she said.
“You remember me?” Armor asked.
“I recognize your voice. Vaguely,” she said, smilingly, and raised her hoof. “Nice to meet you in person.”
“Uh, likewise,” Armor said, clopping hooves with her.
“And who’s this?” she asked, aiming her head somewhere above me.
“Uh, this is Gabrielle Desrochers,” Armor said.
Sandstone aimed a smile towards that empty spot above me, and raised her hoof in a sort of salute. “Gale and health be with you,” she said.
“Uhm, what?” I asked.
Sandstone’s eyes narrowed in curiosity when she heard me, and crouched down to my eye level, then gently sniffed the air in front of me.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were a gryphon.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I said.
“Well, nice to meet you, young mare,” she said, and extended her hoof in greeting.
“Likewise,” I said, and gently bumped hooves with her, then she raised up to address us both.
“So, what can I do for you?” she asked, completely openly.
“Uhm, well, we’re here to try and make you see again,” I said.
That clearly threw her off balance for a moment, before she aimed her head down at me. “Pardon?” she asked, a disbelieving smile adorning her.
“No one contacted you about this?” I asked.
“No, I’m sure I would’ve remembered,” she said, still smiling in amusement.
“Oh.” Armor and I looked at each other. “Well, this is awkward,” I said. “I was sure that someone would’ve, but I guess Shining forgot, or assumed that I would.”
“First name basis with his majesty, eh?” she asked.
“Well, I’m lodging with his sister…. anyway, look, I was hoping you’d know why we’re here, but this could be an awkward conversation to have on a doorstep,” I said, and glanced around at the city around us.
It wasn’t a busy thoroughfare by any means. This was a residential area, but it was still an odd conversation to have in the open like this, even though the traffic was light and gentle and no one was giving us strange looks.
“Oh, certainly,” Sandstone said, and stepped aside. “Come on in.”
“Really?” I said, as I slowly walked in the house. “No offence, but a blind mare inviting two strangers into her house just like that?”
“Uuh, actually,” Armor chimed in. “I haven’t sparred against her myself, but from what I’ve heard, I still don’t stand a chance.”
“Don’t worry, rookie,” Sandstone said, as she closed the door behind us. “Get another ten years of experience under your belt, and we’ll see what happens. Besides, Secateur will be home soon.”
“Secateur?” I asked.
“My wife,” Sandstone said.
I took that in stride. I hadn’t seen it before, but of course something as trivial as which gender you were wouldn’t stand in the way of love in Equestria. Cadence would have a fit if that even came up as a suggestion.
“Tea?” Sandstone asked, as she walked into the kitchen.
“Oh, uh, love to,” I said. “And not to intrude, but do you have anything to snack on too? We stopped by a restaurant earlier, and I think there was a mistake, because we got some sort of modern art on a plate.”
Armor nodded in agreement, unseen by Sandstone of course.
I idly wondered is this is what people mean by “power corrupts”, because many would say that I behaved very inappropriately at that restaurant. As a future Knight of the Realms, and honorary member of Royal Institute of Magic, I felt confident enough to indirectly mock the food we were given, forming the tiny pieces of bread and cream into little ponies and making them run around on the plate with my magic while I cruelly chased them with my mouth like a giant vacuum monster.
The maître d’hotel had come out and stared at us disapprovingly when Armor and I had started laughing uncontrollably at the looks the other patrons were giving us.
“Certainly. Coming right up,” Sandstone said, from the kitchen. “Make yourself at home.”
“Don’t worry,” I said to Armor, as we rested the guitarcase and our saddlebags beside the door. “I know this gryphon restaurant over at Rodeo Drive. They’ve got awesome schnitzels.”
“You know, I might as well use my new digestive powers,” he said.
“Ah, no, it’s that substitute again,” I said.
“Oh.”
We walked a bit uncertainly to another room, with large cushions and a couch in front of a small table, placed in front of a fireplace. “Is this the living room?” I called, to Sandstone.
“Sounds like that’s where you are, yes,” she called back. “I’ll be right there.”
“Do you need help with anything?” Armor called.
“Nope. Just don’t move any of the furniture.”
Armor and I took seats on the couch, looking at each other and feeling more than a little awkward at almost barging into the house of a blind mare, whom had not been told we were coming, and waiting for her to finish tea. The fireplace was unlit, and the only source of light was what streamed in from the windows leading out into a greenhouse.
After a few moments, Sandstone walked in with a tray in her mouth, sporting a plate of cookies, three empty cups, and a steaming teapot.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Uh, couch,” I said.
“Did you move anything?”
“Nnno.”
Sandstone deftly walked up to the small table in front of us, then set the tray down with perfect accuracy.
“Very Impressive,” I said.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling in my direction as she reached for the teapot. “There are some coasters under the table, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, uh, allow me,” Armor interjected.
“Thank you” Sandstone said, taking a seat on a cushion on the opposite side of the table.
“You’re… not what I expect of a veteran who can take on Armor here,” I said, as Armor filled up the cups.
Sandstone chuckled a bit. “And what would you expect?” she asked.
“Puuh, I dunno,” I said. “You’ve got the authority, but I was expecting a more somber or brooding type of it I guess.”
Sandstone chuckled again. “Not my style,” she said, and set her front hooves on the edge of the table. “Where’s the cup?”
“Uh, a bit ahead to your right,” Armor said.
“Thanks.”
“Still, fifty years of service?” I asked.
“That’s right. Was practically on first name basis with the princess. Celestia, I mean,” she said, then sipped on her tea.
“Wow. I’m sorry, that’s gotta be tough,” I said. I would’ve felt more awkward from such a lame comment, but I couldn’t help but be fascinated by how this mare was handling it. Shining Armor was right, she really didn’t let it stop her in any way.
“Yep, really rough,” she said. “But, I still get to help out sometimes. Your grandaddy still sends his recruits to me on the training fields, private.”
‘Awesome.’
“So uh, you’re probably wondering why we’re here,” I said, after munching on a biscuit.
“I remember the conversation up until now,” she said. “I’ve given you like six openings for a sales pitch for a poor, struggling blind mare, but I haven’t gotten any charlatan vibes from you yet, so you’ve got me curious.”
“Ah, well, perhaps it’s better to demonstrate directly,” I said.
“Oh?” Sandstone said, a bit amused. “How?”
“Mind if I come up to you?” I asked.
“Not at all,” she said, then took another sip of her tea.
I walked up to her next to the cushion she lay on, her head still being aimed vaguely in my general direction as she raised an eyebrow. “Why do you only have two horseshoes?” she asked.
“They’re not shoes,” I said, then sat down and peeled the cover off my prosthesis. I gently presented my metallic foreleg to her. “Feel this.”
Sandstone located the limb, and gently brushed a hoof against it. She put her cup down on the saucer, and took my leg in both her hooves, gently feeling it.
“What is this? A new type of armor?” she asked.
I placed one of her hooves on my own prosthetic one, and jiggled it, then did the same with my knee joint.
“Moves naturally, doesn’t it?” I asked.
“Uh yeah, sure,” she said, a bit uncertainly, eyes still aimed blindly ahead.
I placed her hoof on my shoulder, and let her feel where my coat met the leg.
“Watch this,” I said, and started unlocking the magic off switch.
“Hehe, I don’t do that any–” she started, before her grin fell away as my leg fell away.
She sat still for a moment, before she quickly brushed her hoof over my empty shoulder, my foreleg in her other hoof.
Sandstone ran her hoof across my shoulder again a few times, before shifting her attention to my prosthesis in her other hoof. She ran her hoof against the now-lifeless limb, before turning back to my shoulder.
She kept that up for a while, moving her head as if forgetting that she couldn’t see.
Then she just sagged, and stared ahead blankly.
I glanced back at Armor, but he didn’t look any more certain at what to do than I.
After a while, I cleared my throat. “So, uhm, yeah. I’m a prosthetist. I’ve got limbs down pretty well, and now I’ve started on eyes as well. I haven’t gotten to full replacements yet, and I’ve only just started with lenses.”
Sandstone just sat still for a while, before shaking her head. “Wait, you made this?” she asked, and held up my foreleg.
“Yep, or well, the magic part,” I said. “Sergeant Scrap Armor made the chassis.”
Sandstone just slumped again, deep in thought, just before we heard the door open.
“I’m home!” I melodic voice called. “Sandy? Sandyyy?”
Sandstone seemed to snap out of her shock, and whipped her head towards the front door. “In here, honey.”
“Are you alright, Sandy?” the mare asked, as she walked into the living room, and stopping when she saw us. “Oh! Uh, guests, I see.”
She was another earth mare, with a deep red coat and a black, poofy mane.
“Honey,” Sandstone said, in a very neutral voice, and held out her free foreleg towards her wife.
“Oh!” the apparent Secateur cried when she saw Sandstone’s seemingly blank expression, and quickly trotted up to her.
They held each other in a tight embrace, and Sandstone rested her head on Secateur’s neck, burying her muzzle in her mane.
Secateur looked at us curiously, before her eyes widened at seeing my empty shoulder, and my loose foreleg still in Sandstone’s hoof.
After a moment, Sandstone wordlessly waved my foreleg at me. I took it and reattached it while Sandstone more firmly gripped Secateur, as she also laid down and gently started gently stroking Sandstone’s mane.
I walked back and sat down next to Armor, while Sandstone spent a few minutes taking slow, deep breaths.
“Does it work?” Sandstone eventually asked, in a surprisingly steady voice.
“Oh, ehm,” I started, caught a bit off-guard. “Well, I haven’t tried it myself. They have to be custom made, and only Armor here has tried it.”
I shared a look with Armor, nodding towards the two mares and wiping metaphorical sweat off my brow. ‘Whooo. Close call.’
“Ah, yes. It works,” Armor said. “It’s single color, but it worked for me.”
Sandstone’s breathing was returning to normal. “How much do you want?”
That caught me off guard. “Oh, uh, nothing,” I said. “I don’t charge for this.”
Sandstone raised her head from her wife’s mane just a nudge, while Secateur looked at us in disbelief.
After a while, she started chuckling unevenly, before letting go of Secateur, sharing a small kiss as they disengaged.
“You’ve done this before?” she asked, as she again made her comfortable on the cushion, while Secateur sat down on the one beside her.
“Uh, a few times,” I said. “It’s only been limbs though. I’ve been doing those longer.”
“So you, what? Walk around and give new body parts to disabled ponies, no strings attached?” Sandstone asked.
“Yep. That’s right. No need for pulleys and wires with– oh, wait, you mean those kinds of strings,” I said, and scratched my neck. “Yeah. I suppose I have a bit of an unusual occupation. Not to bore you with my life story, yes, that’s what I spend some of my time doing.”
“I’ve never even heard of this before,” Sandstone said.
“Uuh, I haven’t been doing this for very long,” I said, eyeing another cookie on the table. “They ended up in a paper in Applied Magics, and Canterlot Times did an article on that a week or two ago.”
Sandstone chuckled. “I don’t read anymore,” she said, before turning to Secateur, and gesturing towards us. “So, honey, uhm, this is Private Armor of the Royal Guard, and Gabrielle… Desrochers, I think?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Gabrielle Desrochers. Who apparently figured out how to restore lost sight, and just sauntered up to our door and is offering to do so for me, just like that.”
Secateur looked at us, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. I couldn’t really blame her. I really should have sent a letter… which her wife would’ve had to read.
“Well, that’s… that’s,” Secateur said, after a while, nodding uncertainly with a small smile on her face, before suddenly losing consciousness, her head falling listlessly against the cushion.
Sandstone chuckled, before reaching over and pulling Secateur’s limp form towards her, then started gently cradling her wife’s head in her hooves. “Tell me more,” she said.
—
After I had told Sandstone about my work and the general concept of having physical objects enchanted to work as an interface for a pony’s arcanomorphic field, Secateur had woken up.
There were some more confusion and explaining to be made, but after she had taken a little more time to come to her senses while wrapped in Sandstone’s forelegs, Secateur had insisted on making dinner for us while I worked.
Armor was helping her. He thought she looked a bit too unsteady to handle stoves and sharp objects, and he also knew what types of pony food I didn’t appreciate.
“So what do you need me to do?” Sandstone asked, lying on her back on the cushion and facing the ceiling with the blank lenses covering her eyes.
“Just lie there,” I said. “I need to inspect you magically. This could take a while. It’s a bit tricky to get a feel for someone’s arcanomorphic field when you have their physical parts occupying the same space. Much easier with a missing limb.”
“So, uh. Would it help to remove the eyes?” she asked, a bit nervously, and Secateur leaned her head out to watch us with a frightened look.
I waved her off with a placating shake of my head. “Uhm, yes, but that’s a pretty drastic step for a temporary annoyance. Still, it’s gonna be easier when I do this to myself.”
Sandstone eyes widened and she unconsciously tried looking at me. “You’d do this to yourself?”
“What? No. Oh, you probably haven’t noticed, but my right eye is also a prosthesis,” I said. “It’s not magical though, it’s just a polished lump.”
Sandstone sighed and leaned back into the cushion, eyes straight ahead. “You’ve had some terrible things happen to you, haven’t you?” she asked, quietly enough to not carry to the kitchen.
I glanced up at Sandstone from the mnemonic notes I was jotting down as I tried unlocking the secrets of her magic field. After making myself at home in Equestria, traumas from my past had settled in the backseat of my mind, or perhaps the trunk, where they belonged, but they were still there, being ready to haunt me and toughen me up in equal measures, although often at their own leisure.
“I guess,” I said. “I haven’t thought about it in a while.”
“Yeah. You don’t, do you?”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t help.”
“How did you live with it?” she asked.
I fought down the feeling to just shrug the question off, and set down my notes. “I’m actually not sure I did for years. I lost my family when I lost this,” I said, and clacked my hoof against my right foreleg. “Looking back at it, it felt like I spent years just… waiting. I’dunno, like, waiting at a train station on the journey of life or something like that if you like poetry.”
“Nice enough metaphor,” Sandstone said, and smiled. “Though I’m not sure I say I did. I always had my Secateur to help me.”
“Captain Shining Armor said you’re just fearless,” I noted. “That you don’t let anything stop you.”
Sandstone chuckled at that. “I guess he’s right in a way. Put an army in front of me, or strand me in the frozen north, even blind, and I can keep going for ages. But I’m not there. I’m in a comfy house in Canterlot. Like I said, they still let me help out over at the palace, but…”
“Brought down by listlessness rather than might?” I suggested.
“I think I would’ve been, if it wasn’t for Secateur,” she said. “How about you?”
I thought back to everyone in Ponyville. Redheart, the Crusaders, Twilight, Spike, and the famous heroes, Cheerilee and the rest of the class, Lyra and Bonbon, the flower trio, and of course, Celestia and Luna. I glanced into the kitchen, seeing Armor flipping the food with spatula in his wing. “Same.”
“Just so you know,” I continued. “I don’t know if it’s gonna be the same for you as it was for me, but there might be a lot of emotions that want out in a while.”
Sandstone tittered. “You saw me and my wife earlier. I think I know what’s coming. She might get another episode or two herself.
“Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m really looking forward to this. Going back to the ‘journey of life’ metaphor, Secateur is my travel mate and there’s nopony I’d rather have with me than her, but it would be nice to be able to see the sights with her rather than just listening to her descriptions.”
“You’re gonna like this then,” I said, and wove the final part of the enchantment into her lenses.
Sandstone’s featureless eyes widened, then she suddenly sat up straight, looking around the room in awe. She waved her hooves in front of her, before she turned to me, and grinned widely.
—
“Compared to the last time I did this, this was a bit of an anticlimactic ending,” I said, as Armor and I walked down the now dark streets of Canterlot.
Sandstone had regained her vision, although be it a bit limited. Like Armor had described it, it was monochromatic. Like black-and-white, only it was more blue-and-grey. I thought that sounded like it was really hard to make out details, but they said it worked pretty well.
Clearly, there was a lot of room for improvement, but Sandstone loved it all the same, especially being able to read like normal again, and Secateur had even liked the look of the lenses.
“Maybe, but I don’t think Sandstone and Secateur agree,” Armor said.
After a moment, he noticed the smarmy grin I was giving him.
“Not like that,” he groaned.
I chuckled a bit impishly.
“Although they might celebrate tonight,” he said.
“You just keep dreaming about that, stallion,” I said.
Armor just stuck out his tongue at me.
We made our way to the palace, still operating after sundown, although with very reduced activity. Armor helped me with my things up to my room, then bid me goodnight and walked down to where he slept.
For my part, I barely even approached my bed, before I dismissed the idea, and walked out into the hallways of the castle.
I walked some of the same hallways that I had familiarised myself with when I had met Angus. Everywhere, there were luxurious tapestries, silk-like curtains gently flowing from soft breezes through open windows, and openings out into semi-hidden balconies looking out over the luxurious gardens, and even plenty of cushioned couches on them, kept from being ruined thanks to the controlled weather.
I reared up and rested my forelegs on the railing of one of the balconies, and my head on my forelegs. This was always slightly unpleasant at first, before my prosthesis warmed up from my body heat. Then I looked down at the gardens below.
“Hello, Gabrielle,” Celestia said, not surprising me in the least.
“Good evening, Celestia,” I said, looking around at her. “I had a feeling you’d show up.”
“Don’t expect to hide from me in my own castle,” Celestia said, smilingly. “Only one pony has been able to do that.”
“I wasn’t hiding,” I said. “And who’s that?”
“Starswirl,” she said. “Nopony kept as many secrets as he. Probably because they weren’t meant to be secrets half of the time.”
I let out an amused snort, and looked out over the gardens again.
Celestia walked up, and put a wing around me. “And there is of course a reason why you’re not in bed,” she noted.
“I guess,” I said.
“Would you like to talk about it?” Celestia asked.
I did a quick inspection of my own thoughts, and decided. “I think so, if I could only figure out what they are.”
“I’m in no rush,” she offered.
I nodded, and gave explaining my own thoughts the old college try. “Well, I think it’s a lot of things. Someone, in a totally tasteful manner, reminded me of what happened to me,” I said, and gave my prosthetic hoof a demonstrative way. “Stubborn brain chemistry acting up again. Then I’ve been thinking about, well... myself, others, and myself and others. Like… stuff I’m not used to. Relationships. Things like that.”
I turned to look Celestia in the eye with a look of amused ruefulness. “Then I got what could be the most unwarranted feeling of homesickness keeping me from sleeping.”
Celestia tightened her wing around me. “No it’s not,” she said, kindly. “You learned to love what you had. Of course you’ll miss it.”
“I guess,” I said, and looked out over the garden again. “I moved twice after I lost my parents. The first place was an… okay place. Then, when I got things in order, I moved to a better place. That first place was the first home I had after being all alone. When I came to terms with what had happened to me, I did it there. When I didn’t do it at the hospital of course. That’s where I spent entire days just staring listlessly out the window, going in painful circles in my mind before crying myself to sleep.
“When I moved away, I thought that I was going to wash my hands of something that I associated with sadness and emptiness. I settle down in my new apartment, better, bigger, cleaner... and realise that I miss the last place.”
I looked up at Celestia again, and waved circles at the side of my head and spun my natural eye around while the other one stayed in place.
Celestia smiled calmly at me. “We’re both touched in the head then. I missed mine and Luna’s old castle for decades, even centuries, even though I could go back and see it at any time. I still can.”
“Ah yeah. Twilight told me about that place,” I said.
“Like your old homes, it’s a place I can’t help but associate with loss. When you moved to new homes, you were taking steps away from memories that meant so much to you, and when you came to Equestria, almost all your physical connection to your parents vanished,” Celestia explained.
I gave that some thought. “Yeah, that sounds right. Although, I still have the things that matter the most to me,” I said, referring to my guitar and photos.
“I’m glad. I hope being in Equestria will continue to help mend your wounds,” Celestia said.
I smiled appreciatively at her, before I remembered something. “Celestia?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“You remember before I moved to Ponyville, how you… were being like a mother to me?” I asked.
Now it was Celestia’s turn to smile a bit ruefully. “I do,” she said.
“Why were you trying to be that?” I asked.
Celestia looked out at the night sky, thinking for a moment. “Because… I think it’s for the same reason I gave back then. I’m lonely. More lonely than I feel I have a right to be, with my sister, my former student, and my adoptive niece. I shouldn’t want more, but I do.”
I rested my head comfortingly against her. “I don’t think it’s wrong to want more. I don’t know how much of a family member I can be to you, but if you still want to, I can give it a shot.”
Celestia once again rested her head on mine. “Thank you,” she said, in a small voice.
We stayed like that for a while, until I let out a big yawn. Celestia chuckled, and we looked at each other. “Has your sleeplessness worn off?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“Then let’s get you to bed,” she said, and magically lifted me up on her back as she walked indoors again. Her back was just as comfy as Armor’s, but she was quite a bit bigger, and I got more mane in my face.
“What made you change your mind?” she asked.
“Several things,” I said. “I realized that I still want a mom, and you’ve done a really good job every single time you’ve had a chance to now.”
“I know I can’t ask you to be a child again like one would expect a pony of your age to be, but then you’ll also understand that I can’t be there for you all the time like a parent would,” she said.
“So not exactly your daughter. More like Cadence?” I asked.
“Yes, something like that.”
“This wouldn’t be an official thing, right? I don’t have to be a princess like her?” I asked, suspiciously.
“Not unless you want to,” Celestia said, looking back at me.
“Pass. What does Luna say?”
“Luna has lamented that Cadence is not younger, so that she could be an aunt for her when she was a foal.”
“Ah. Well, at least I’m technically the right age as a pony, and to be honest, I feel like a child sometimes.”
Celestia looked back at me again and smirked. “Most ponies, people, do now and then. Now, you better get to bed and get ready for your upcoming lectures and ceremonies, Madam Desrochers.”
—
One of the wonderful things about Equestria is of course the predictable weather, and all that comes with it.
I heard that there are places back on Earth where the windlessness is the rule rather than the exception, but I’d never seen it, so it was only recently that I realized that I could do paperwork on a park bench, and not have to coop up indoors. Now I could choose between a luxurious suite in a beautiful castle, with room service and a fireplace, or the beautiful outdoors, in the public area of the palace gardens, where the temperature was perfect and the birds chirped soothingly.
Sometimes I thought the ponies were just trying to make things difficult for me.
“Ah, Madam Desrochers. How nice to see you again.”
I looked up to see the familiar face of Kibitz, the elderly stallion’s suit and appearance impeccable even among nobles and other ponies who had polished their looks for a trek through the palace gardens.
“Good morning, Kibitz,” I said. “How are you?”
“Very well, my dear,” he said. “Her majesty is having a lengthy conversation with her… other majesty, and I have finished rescheduling for the moment, so there is some time off.”
“That’s nice. What are they talking about?” I asked.
“You, I believe,” Kibitz said, and walked up to the bench. “Do you mind if I join you.”
“Uh, not at all,” I said, and moved away a stray paper from where he was. “I assume that it’s about what Celestia and I talked about yesterday.”
“It is,” Kibitz said, and looked around at the other ponies walking by. None of them were in earshot, but he still lowered his voice. “Princess Luna wants to make sure what this arrangement entails, I believe.”
I nodded. “I don’t want to be an heir, and I don’t think Celestia wants me to be one either. I just…” I trailed off, before just shaking my head and continuing. “Oh, I’ve done heart-to-hearts with so many people recently, you might as well join the club. I want a parent. I had two, they were great, I’d like something like that again, please. You could never mistake Celestia for my mother, but she does a really good job.”
Kibitz nodded. “Yes… I have been by Celestia’s side for almost one hundred and fifty years now. I think I have a pretty good understanding of what’s good for her. Your presence is not a balm to cure all ailments of her heart, but it is a good one.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief I didn’t know I held. “Thank you, Kibitz,” I said. I perked my ear towards a group of fancily dressed ponies walking down the path we were sitting by, and decided to retire this conversation. I didn’t plan on becoming a princess myself, and I didn’t want anyone to overhear anything that would give them ideas. “Hey, could you help me with this?” I asked Kibitz, and held out my bare foreleg prosthesis.
“I can certainly try,” he said. “What do you need help with?”
“I need you to hold a few things in place so I can detach the lower leg,” I said.
“Uhm, I shall try.”
Kibitz held the parts I told him to hold in place while I worked, and finally, it was detachable. I powered down the prosthesis, and removed the lower part of the leg, leaving the upper part, and the knee joint with the rig to reattach the lower part on.
“What happens now?” Kibitz asked.
“Now, we use this,” I said, and magically fished out the gryphon claw from my bag. “I just need to fill it with gem dust so I can give it a test run. I wanna know it works before I give it to someone. So if you’ll just hold it like this, in your hooves, not your magic.”
I transferred the gem dust from my prosthesis to the gryphon claw, sealed the hatches, and roughly attached the gryphon claw on the joint of my prosthesis.
It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it worked well enough for this.
“And now, I just turn it back on,” I said, and did the physical maneuver to power it up.
The prosthesis instantly sprung to life, as it did every morning I put it on, only this time there was a large, taloned hand at the end of it. It was more than a little too large for me, but it functioned as expected.
“Ah, it works,” I said, satisfied, and clicked the talon shut with with metallic clinks. “My hoof field looking like a human hand must translate into the movement of the talons.”
I tried opening and closing the hand a few more times, flexing all the individual talons, and with a bit of mental effort, slowly managed to bend the thumb back to where birds mostly kept them. “Hmm, the pollex functions, though it’s a bit tricky for me to keep it there. Secundus and medius each get a talon of their own, while medicinalis and minimus gets to share the outer digit.”
Kibitz was looking on in fascination as I flexed the digits experimentally. “I know this one is a gift, but are you going to switch your hoof for something like this?”
“No. I already have fingers thanks to the way my hoof field works, and gryphons have another kind of magic active that doesn’t make them eviscerate what they don’t want to, which I don’t have. I just wanted to test this out. Most likely, the recipient’s magic will work on this too. Otherwise we’re just gonna have to blunt these,” I said, and waved the talons around in front of him.
Once again, I had been a little too lost in my work, and hadn’t noticed how the crowd that was about to head past us had instead stopped in my blind spot and were looking at me and my gryphon talon with wide eyes.
Kibitz and I looked at them. Kibitz’ disapproving look was not enough to send them on their way, and I was frankly not embarrassed by taking my new job seriously.
“Good morning, civilians,” I yawned, languishly reached out and grabbed a steel lamppost beside me with the talon, and casually bent it a few dozen degrees. “Continue about your business.”
Kibitz’ moustache bristled slightly as he struggled with holding back a laugh.
—
I stood on a table by a collection of blackboards in the amphitheatre-like classroom, preparing my diagrams and formulas while Inkwell was out collecting the eagless.
I heard the door open, and looked behind me to see a pair of unicorn mares stride into the room.
I went back to copying large versions of the formulas on the blackboard, making sure I wasn’t missing any steps.
“You think we’re in the right place?” one of them asked.
“Don’t know,” the other said, before raising her voice in my direction. “Hey, you!”
I glanced back at them, standing on the far side of the semi-lit room with curious looks on their faces. “Yeah?”
“Do you know if there’s gonna be a lecture here on fake limbs?” the first one said.
“Prosthetics, yes,” I corrected. “If you’re here for that, you’re a bit early.”
“And who are you?” the second one asked.
“Right now, just the person who’s prepping the presentation,” I said. “You can sit down if you want, but I really have to finish this.”
“Look, little filly, you can’t just mess around with that stuff,” the second one said, in a stern voice.
My mind was somewhere else, and I wasn’t being totally on the ball with what she meant. “I can’t?” I asked.
“No!” she said, and the two started walking up to me. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand this, but Professor Inkwell has gone through a lot of trouble to arrange this guest lecture.”
“Trouble?” I asked, skeptical. “It was a simple question and a fancy-looking parchment. I don’t see how that’s a lot of trouble,” I said, and went back to the metallurgical part that Scrap had helped put together for me.
“How do you…?” Number Two started, before shaking her head. “Look, filly, you can’t be here.”
“What, on the table?” I asked. “This place is too big for me if I’m not.”
I perked my ears when I heard the door open to the side of the little stage, followed by the sound of a pony approaching, along with one single thumping sound. ‘About time.’
The first unicorn chimed in with a bit of pleading in her eyes. “Look perhaps you should just go do something else,” she said.
“I certainly should,” I said, jumped down from the table, and started moving towards the curtains on edge of the stage. I called back to them, “I’ll be back in a bit, you can sit down and wait wherever if you want.”
The whole lecture hall looked a bit like a theater, which I thought was a bit strange before I noticed how well the arrangement, with curtains and such, added to the acoustics, making it really well-adjusted for voices.
So any sound of speech coming from the side of the stage wouldn’t be heard by the people sitting in the benches, and vice versa, unless they shouted.
I did a mental checklist as I walked backstage, when I saw Inkwell with a gryphon walking beside her.
I had only seen gryphon eaglesses twice before, at the Equestria Games, and one who had looked out curiously from the kitchen at that restaurant when I had ordered typical “carnivore” food, and even then I hadn’t gotten a close look at them.
Eaglesses looked just as cool as the tercels, the feathers on her head even forming a sort hairdo that was even more pronounced than Arnfried's.
What stood out about this one though, and which my eyes were drawn to despite missing limbs weren’t really an unusual sight for me, was the pegleg she had instead of her right talon.
It was a stout wooden arrangement, though not a pirate pegleg, since it ended with a sort of thick rubber bottom, to not slide across the floor I assumed. Back when I had been a human, I had one that ended with a plastic foot, so that I could put shoes on it, but since gryphons probably didn’t wear shoes, an inanimate talon would be pretty pointless, since it would probably be even more clumsy than a pegleg like this.
I finally tore my gaze away from the leg. Professional interest or not, my looking might just have come across as simply morbid fascination.
The look that she had was different from what I was used to seeing on gryphons. Arnfried practically oozed with calm authority, a bit like Celestia but without the motherliness. The waiter at the restaurant had been surprised by my request for a few moments before being all professional, and the gryphon athletes in the empire had been all determination and solemn pride.
This gryphon looked nervous.
Inkwell gestured back and forth between the two of us. “Giselle, this is Gabrielle Desrochers. Gabe, this is Giselle.”
I offered my left hoof to Giselle, who cautiously shook it, and now that I knew how they magically stopped themselves from tearing gashes in everything they grabbed, I idly studied their magical field, noting how the sharps points of her talons didn’t poke me in the flesh.
“Hello. Pleased to meet you,” I said.
“Uhm… hi,” she said, seeming conflicted about keeping her gaze low, which meant looking me in the eye, or aiming her gaze at something else.
“So, uh, has Professor Inkwell told you about who I am, or what this is going to entail?” I asked, figuring it best to seem professional.
“Uhm, she said that you could… could,” she started, before trailing off, and looking down on her crude prosthesis.
“Yeah, just a second, I’ll show you,” I said, and walked over to the edge of the stage where my saddlebag was resting. Inkwell and Giselle followed as I brought out the metallic, taloned hand.
I handed it over to Giselle, who cautiously took it in her own, lone hand. “So, congratulations,” I said. “This is yours, though you might wanna leave it with me for a little while longer so I can get it actually working.”
Giselle turned the hand over and inspected it wide eyed, before turning her eyes back at me. “Uhm, thank you,” she said, uncertainly. “So it… does work?”
“No, but it will,” I said. ”I haven’t tried adjusting them for gryphons, but I don’t think it will be too different.”
“Gabe,” Inkwell said. “Giselle here isn’t all that certain about what you’re planning. Frankly, neither am I.”
I nodded understandably at the nervous and slightly sheepish-looking gryphon.
“Alright, to sum this up,” I said, removed the covering for my foreleg prosthesis, and moved it around demonstrably. “I’m gonna enchant that hand be able to do this, including moving the talons. Free of charge, no strings attached, but if you’re up for it, I’d like to do so as part of a presentation that I’m about to have.”
Giselle looked at me with wide eyes at first, before nervously looking out on the stage, hearing the sound of ponies trickling in and taking up seats on the benches.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I’ll get it working for you anyway.”
“Wwwwhat do I need to do?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said, and shook my head. “I’m just gonna inspect your magical aura, then adjust that limb to respond to you, and away we go. Or, well, the point is that the people out there are gonna get a good look at it, but you don’t have to do anything. You can walk out of here right now if you want, but I’d feel a little thrown if you did.”
That coaxed a small smile from Giselle, before she shook her head. “Of course I wouldn’t. I just… it… this wasn’t what I expected when I woke up this morning.”
“Ah, yes,” Inkwell spoke up. “I told some of my assistants to contact you about this, but I didn’t know what they wrote until just now. I’m sorry, I take responsibility. It sounded like you were being drafted.”
“Nice to hear I’m not the only one messing that up,” I muttered to myself.
“What?” Giselle asked.
“Nothing. So, don’t worry about anything. You just sit there and look pretty while I do the talking.”
Giselle carefully grabbed her new talon in a wing, before hesitatingly extending her remaining one towards my prosthesis. “Can… can I...?”
“Sure,” I said, and presented my foreleg to her, pulling up the cover to reveal the metal underneath.
Giselle gently took it, then ran her talon over the finish, and hesitatingly looked into the hollowed out interior.
“Completely arteficial,” I said, and demonstratively inserted a quill into it like a ramrod. “We couldn’t hollow out the hand in yours, so it’s a bit heavier, and of course you’re gonna spend a lot of magic the first few months, but you’ll get used to it.”
“It’s beautiful,” Giselle said.
“I’ll tell Scrap that you said that,” I said. “He’s the smith, so he takes care of the chassis.”
“How can you just give things like this away?”
I shrugged. “It’s no big deal. Making them isn’t really hard. Scrap is fun to be around, and I paid him with a magic boombox, so it didn’t cost me anything.”
I probably could’ve gotten the state to pay for it, but I was planning on giving Scrap that thing anyway, and we could also listen to score for Army Of Darkness while we worked.
“A weapon?” Inkwell asked.
“No it’s a music player. It’s… never mind, I’ll tell you later,” I said, and pulled a bit at a curtain to see the classroom filling up. “Looks like it’s about time to start. Got any question, and are you still in?”
Giselle took a breath, and nodded.
“Alright, I’ll just borrow that thing,” I said, and indicated her new hand, while Inkwell walked out to the seats.
Giselle handed it over. I put it in my bag, while taking out a tube of cookies. “Here, munch on something while you’re waiting. This might get a little boring.”
The ponies were still trickling in as I hopped up on the table again. I was getting some curious looks, including one annoyed look from one of the two mares from before, but she didn’t say anything, just looking between me and Inkwell.
I looked up from my quick rundown of the notes and saw Inkwell’s “minions”, and gave them a wave and a smile which they returned, which made everyone look at them wonderingly.
“I think that’s everypony,” Inkwell said after a while. “Alright, students. Please welcome Honorary Doctor Gabrielle Eleanor Desrochers.”
‘Hey, I’m not a doctor. Wait, honorary?’
There were some scattered clippity-clops from the audience, with the only steady ones coming from the minions.
“Uh, thank you, Professor Inkwell,” I said, and turned to the rest of the class. “Good morning, everyone. Name’s Gabe, and I’m here to talk about enchanted prosthetics.
“Feel free to stop me and ask questions. I’ve had several lecturers say and not really mean it, and I hate that. Now, I will start off assuming that you all possess a certain level of knowledge on the subjects of enchantments, arcanomorphic fields, arcanokinetic projection, and thaumic endurance. Any questions so far?”
An earth stallion with a fedora, sitting by a bench near the entrance in the back, raised his hoof.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Did you grow up around gryphons?”
“No. Anyone else?”
There was an uncertain silence, except for the enthusiastic scribbling from the stallion in the back.
“Alright,” I said, then magicked a chalk-stick towards the blackboard and started writing down some keywords, drawing little lines between them as I talked. “Now, the concept behind this is pretty simple: enchant a material to respond to the movement of someone’s arcanomorphic field so that it can act as an interface, and make sure that there are no interferences. In practice, this is a little tricky, especially since you almost have to have skills with enchanting a variety of materials.”
“Question,” someone said.
I looked, and saw a stallion with his hoof in the air.
“Shoot.”
“Do you use the Come Alive spell?”
“Uhm, no,” I said, and noticed one of the mares from before, the confrontational one, animatedly rolling her eyes at the question, and decided to make my answer a bit more supportive.
“No, purely an enchantment corresponding with a specific magical signature,” I said, and walked over to the edge of the table, where I couldn’t reach the blackboard I was planning to use, without the use of another table on the far side of the stage.
“I can give a little short rundown of that if you like, before we go into that part in detail,” I said, before aiming my leg towards the other table. “Hold on, just gotta…”
I launched my grappling hook towards the table, grabbed its leg, and rolled it towards me. “There we go,” I said, and looked towards the stunned audience.
Nearly every mouth in the room hung open, with even Inkwell looking mildly surprised, until the fedora stallion in the back seemed to break the moment of awe by once again scribbling like crazy.
—
The presentation was going well.
It probably wasn’t the best presentation, but seeing as how it was the first one I’d ever held, it was pretty smooth.
Although I appreciated the enthusiasm of the guy in the back, he did have a lot of questions.
“So you’ve financed most of the research yourself?”
A lot of them weren’t really relevant, either.
“Yes, but going back to—”
“Were you denied a stipend?”
“... No. Now, the next step is to screen out unwanted ambient magical influences,” I said, and turned back towards the board. “If you don’t, you have to stick to little more than rudimentary functionality, or the limb will respond to all manners of background radiation, giving it almost violent spasms at the best of times.”
“So you’ve had no contact with the institute before this?” The fedora stallion asked.
He had been getting a lot of annoyed looks by the rest of the classroom, which was one of the reasons I kept answering readily. Though I hoped he was gonna be done soon, the eagerness in the classroom had been rising steadily since everyone had noticed my prosthesis, and what it could do.
I took a breath, put the chalk down, and turned to the stallion. “No, I’ve only talked with Professor Inkwell, and two other students in here, before today,” I said, and inspected him closely. He didn’t look like a typical student. “Look, buddy, who are you?”
“Neat Column,” he said. “Canterlot Times.”
“Oh.”
‘That explains it. Well, I did tell everyone in here that they were free to ask questions.’
“Well, alright, I think it’s time for the practical demonstration.”
“Haven’t you already demonstrated that it works?” Neat Column asked.
“No. I’ve demonstrated the functionality, but not the creation process,” I said. “Now, I’d like everyone who wants to see how this is going to work to step forward. Bring the goggles, and anything you’d like to take notes with.”
There was an uncertain shuffling, before Inkwell and her minions took the initiative, and walked down towards the stage, prompting everyone to follow their example.
“Now, please welcome Giselle,” I said, and saw that the gryphon was ready to step forward.
Giselle walked out from the side of the stage, limping slightly on her pegleg.
“As you can see, Giselle here already has a prosthesis, but it is completely mundane,” I said, as I held out a hoof welcomingly to the eagless.
“Now,” I said, interrupting everyone from staring too much at Giselle’s crude replacement, and presenting the metal hand from behind a stack of papers on the table I was on. “This is what I’m planning on giving her, and you’re here to see how it’s done.”
There was a general murmur of curiosity at the sight of the hand.
“If you’d all gather around, and I’ll show you the other component,” I said, and took out a bag of ground up gem dust. I had to get Scrap to help me find a way to grind up my lapis lazuli without Spike’s help. I kept paying him in gems that the Crusaders and I dug up, and Twilight had complained that he’d been putting on weight.
“This is ground up lapis lazuli, my favorite component,” I said, and tossed a few small bags to the edge of the table. “We enchant this to act as a motor, responding to Miss Giselle’s arcanomorphic form, and then we seal it inside the chassis, which is designed to block everything but her magic signature. I’m going to enchant this in several parts, so those of you who don’t have a pair of goggles right now, don’t worry. We’ll pass them around so you can all get a chance.”
Giselle removed her pegleg and presented her residual limb, resting it on the table. Everyone got the chance to magically inspect it, and then I got to work with enchanting the stuff.
It was a slower process than usual though, as I did it several times over, while answering questions.
“So how much do you charge for this?” the milder mannered of the mares I saw before the lecture asked.
“Nothing. I don’t need to charge for this,” I said.
“Really? How do you get the materials?” someone else asked.
“Me and my friends dig up the gems, and I hire a smith I know to forge the chassis. He gives me some good prices,” I said.
“So you’re not being funded by the institute?” Neat Column asked, to which Inkwell rolled her eye.
“Nope,” I said, causing Column to start scribbling.
The other students might not have been aware of this either, since they started murmuring amongst themselves.
“Well, to be fair, I’ve had Twilight Sparkle and a royal artificer teach me enchanting, so credit to them as well,” I said, causing the murmur to rise to new levels.
“Alright,” I said, after I had finished, and looked around at the assembled faces. “Did everyone get a good look at how it was done?”
No one shook their head.
“Did everyone make all the notes they wanted?”
The heads slowly nodded.
“Would anyone like to see it done again?”
Stillness.
“Alright. Giselle, are you ready?”
Giselle, who hadn’t said a word since the presentation started, nodded her head.
I placed the metallic limb on the remains of her lower foreleg. “Alright, you just activate it by turning this dial and pressing it down as a button,” I said, as I demonstrated how it was done.
Giselle’s eyes widened as the limb came alive. She lifted it up to inspect it in details, opening and closing the hand, and flexing all the individual talons experimentally, making some pretty authoritative clicking sounds. It was slightly larger than her other hand, but it didn’t look ridiculous or bulky.
I was actually a bit envious of how it looked. My prostheses had many capabilities, and they looked impressive as well, but they didn’t come close to just the sheer awesomeness of a chromed gryphon claw.
“Since the chassis doesn’t block the magical signature of Giselle’s arcanomorphic claw, it also allows her innate magical capabilities to pass through,” I told the students, then turned towards the gryphon. “As a demonstration, could you please run your talons across the table without scratching it, then do scratch it?”
Giselle nodded at me, and did just that. She pressed her talons against the table, and dragged them across the surface. The first two times it looked no different then if she had fingers instead of talons, but the third time, her eyes widened at how deep the marks she left on it were.
“Unlike your organic talons, these won’t grow constantly, So you won’t need to sharpen them as often, but when you do, you’re gonna need a whetstone,” I said. “Luckily, they were made by the same guy who made my legs, so they’re quality stuff, and they’ll last pretty much forever.”
I looked at Giselle, and saw the smile, the moisture in her eyes, the shorter breaths. By now I’d learn to recognise the signs.
“Okay then,” I said, before there was a chance for a hug. “That’s the lecture, and the demonstration. Does anyone have any questions?”
They did. It went on for about an hour. I clarified some things, talked about other projects, gave them Scrap’s name, told them he was busy. Mostly Neat Column asked about me though.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Giselle, as I was packing up my material after Inkwell had finally shooed everyone out of the room.
“Like a million bits,” she said, smiling widely.
“It was a bit different for me, and everyone else I’ve done this for,” I observed, as I crammed a stack of papers into my saddlebag. “There were always tears involved.”
“Not for me,” Giselle said, before suddenly standing right next to me and pulling me into a tight hug.
‘Blasted ambush predators.’
“No compunctions about how you look?” I asked, while being held in her grip.
“Are you kidding? This looks great,” she said, then let me go, and inspected her new hand again.
“It does,” I agreed, nodding. “I’m kinda envious.”
“It’s so strange,” Giselle said, as she gently deactivated her new limb and removed it, revealing the stump beneath. “I used to hate seeing this, but now it’s… not so bad,” she continued, waving the little nub around.
“That’s a good sign, I think,” I said. “It’s just as well, I recommend you keep the limb off when you’re sleeping, at least the first few months. It’s gonna be a magical drain, so it’s a big counterproductive to keep it on when you’re tired.”
“Got it,” she said. “I gotta show this to my family.”
“Where do they live?” I asked.
“Most of my family lives in Greifenhaus, but my folks and my brother lives here in Canterlot,” she said.
“Ah, okay. Like I said, take it easy until you get used to it. If you’re not familiar with naps now, you will be soon, as you’re getting used to that thing.”
“Thank you again, so much,” she said, and pulled me in for a softer hug with her wing.
“No problem. Thanks for letting me test it out on gryphons too,” I said.
“Heh. Kinda strange that you’re thanking me,” she said, and reattached her new limb. “This is gonna be so great. I can start working full capacity in my family’s restaurant, and I’ll never have to worry about burning this hand.”
That caught my attention. “... This restaurant. It wouldn’t happen to be on Rodeo Drive would it?” I asked.
“Yes it is. How did you know?” she asked.
My eyes lit up. “Oh, that’s your restaurant? I ate there a few weeks ago, the last time I was in Canterlot. The food was amazing!”
“Wait, you’re that filly my brother told me about? Who ate an entire full-size jägerschnitzel and asked for seconds?” Giselle asked.
“Maybe. Is your brother the waiter? Gray feathers with a blue tinge, and light brown fur?
“That’s him,” she said, and looked at me closely again. “Are you sure you don’t have a gryphon family? Gabrielle Desrochers isn’t exactly a typical pony name, and hardly anypony wants to try gryphon food, much less foals.”
“Yeah I’m sure,” I said, laughing a bit.
“Alright,” she said. “Sooo… you like the food?”
“I sure did,” I said, slightly wagging my tail for some reason.
“Then I think I know of a way to repay you. Stop by anytime. Friends of mine eat for free.”
I held out my prosthesis. “I’ll take you up on that,” I said, and she bumped my hoof with her own prosthesis, producing a heavy clack.
—
“Come in,” I said, in response to the knock on the door.
Armor, in armor, opened it and stepped in, removing his helmet as he did so.
“Dame Desrochers,” he said, while jokingly standing at attention.
I looked up at him from the dress splayed out on the bed, raising the eyebrow over my left eye, since my right socket was currently empty.
“Well, you might as well get used to the title,” he said. “A knight is not a knight if they are not respected.”
“I already have more respect than I know what to do with,” I said, and turned my attention back to the dress.
“If you don’t like it, you should probably stop helping ponies,” Armor said, and I could sense his smirk even when I wasn’t looking at him.
I shrugged. “Maybe I should do this covertly then,” I said. “Sneak up on people who need new limbs and attach them to them in their sleep, like a reverse tooth-fairy-batman-prosthetist.”
“You could still do that,” Armor said, playing along. “But you need to stop by my uncle, or some other artificer, one more time before doing that.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, it’s gonna be ceremonial, but a knight is also not a knight without her sword.”
I looked up at him with a raised eyebrow again. “A sword?”
“Sure. You should see my grandfolks’ house. They’re up to here in old swords,” he said, and held a hoof up to his neck. “Plenty of old rewards and relics and stuff like that.”
“Huh,” I said, nodding concedingly. “So I don’t have to use it?”
“No, but if you get a good one from Scrap, we can use that when you learn to fight.”
“Alright, sounds like a decent arrangement,” I said. “Now, can you help me dress?”
Armor gave me an endearing smile, and walked up to me. “Yes. Are there any human customs about helping each other to dress?” he asked. “I think you said something about humans always having clothes.”
“Well, yeah, we humans consider ourselves indecent when we’re naked, and not turned into ponies,” I said, as I magically lifted the dress up, reared up, and steadied myself on the edge of the bed. “And since dressing often involves being naked, not just anyone is fit to help someone with dressing. Why?”
“Just wondering,” Armor said, and gently put my front prosthesis through the correct hole in the dress. “Some ponies think it’s unbecoming to be seen half-dressed, and only let ponies they trust dress them, so you better learn to trust your squadmates really quick in the guard.”
“I trust you though,” I said, as he held some piece of cloth up to let me poke my tail out from under it before I stood down on all fours. “How do I look?”
“You better take a look at yourself,” he said, with a smile.
I walked over to the mirror, carefully looking back to make sure I didn’t step on any fabric.
“Whoa,” I said, in a low voice, and couldn’t help but open my eye socket at the sight. “Rarity, you’ve really outdone yourself.”
“She sure has,” Armor said, which summoned a small smile on my face. “You look beautiful.”
We stood there a few minutes, contemplating the outfit.
“Actually,” Armor said. “I think you’re supposed to skip the coverings, and wear that blue eyepatch she sent with you.”
I had forgotten about that. “You’re probably right,” I said, removing the covers and floating the patch over.
It was a two-point attachment, rather than the three-point I was used to, but it worked really well with the outfit.
“You might not be trained in combat, but it kinda looks like you are now,” Armor said.
He was right. Filly or not, I looked cool, stylish, and pretty.
“And you sure look ready to be knighted,” he continued, and looked at my slowly sinking expression. “Something wrong?”
“I’m just… tired,” I said. “I don’t really feel up for this.”
“Well, you’ve been doing magic again,” Armor said, and held out his wing as a step towards the bed. “You still have some time before the ceremony starts. I think you should get some rest. Don’t worry, I’ll wake you up in time.”
“Yeah. Good idea,” I said, and he helped me up into the bed without messing up the dress. I lay down, and removed my legs before resting my head on the pillow. “I hope it’s not too drawn out.”
“You’ll do fine,” he said, confidently. “Get some rest. I’ll go get a soft drink or something for when you wake up.”
I held out my foreleg towards him, and he stopped putting on his helmet, then leaned down towards me.
I nuzzled him lightly on the cheek. “Thanks,” I said.
He smiled down at me, before putting on his helmet. “I’ll be back soon, Dame Desrochers.”
—
I had been to weddings twice before and wished they were over as soon as they began. I don’t care what people say, they’re just, so, boring.
It’s great when people love each other. Really, it is, but the ceremonies could use a lot of trimming for modern sensibilities if you ask me. So many speeches, and all that waiting, celebrating not directly the love, but the legal contract that highly encouraged the participants of the marriage to pool their fiscal resources. It was little more than an extravagant way for people to signal that they were off the romantic market, and were probably going to breed.
Oh I know what a lot of people would say to that. They’d say that it’s a reason to celebrate, which is always a good thing. To which I would respond, “Fair enough. So skip all the boring parts.”
Then there were the usual issues I used to have. A prosthetic leg held in place with suction tended to itch, and sometimes even hurt, after a while. First option was to try and find a secluded corner where I sit down, pull my dress up, a long way up too, and just wait a bit with my leg off before reattaching it. Easier said than done at a place where there is always someone kind hearted enough to prowl for people currently not mingling. The second option was a wheelchair, another not very appealing option among crowds of mingle-happy, forced mingle-happy, jealous, and increasingly intoxicated people. Also, remember: I was dressed up, and wearing my purely cosmetic prosthetic arm.
I also didn’t dance.
This wasn’t a wedding, thank goodness, but it looked a bit like it.
Also thankfully, while the subject matter was me and my accolades, Celestia and Luna were the biggest stars, on account of them always being the biggest stars. No exception here, and no complaints either.
I was seated a few spots away from where there might be a podium, but where there instead was an opening adorned with a red carpet leading out in front of the table, and flanked by more tables, arranged so that there was a large, empty space that everyone had a clear view of.
I couldn’t quite figure out what determined the seating positions though. I was sitting next to Luna, with Celestia on the other side of her. Beyond her, on the other side of the space between the tables, were Prince Blueblood, with some ponies in fancy clothes I didn’t recognize.
Speaking of fancy clothes, Fancy Pants was sitting by one of the other tables, along with a white-coated, lanky unicorn mare with pink mane and tail. They both raised their glasses at me after Fancy Pants whispered something in her ear. I managed to trick my face into smiling and raised my own orange soda (in an expensive looking stained glass cup) in answer.
The general din of talking was loud enough to drown out most conversations, but I did catch some parts here and there. Like the grey-coated, black-maned unicorn stallion and light yellow-coated, purple-and-white-maned mare who kept glancing at me and saying things about my “marvelous yet dangerous looking attire”.
Then of course, Armor stood guard by the entrance to the hall, while his grandfather, Plate, was seen here and there, skulking in the shadows for anything out of the ordinary. I also caught sight of Kibitz and Raven appearing every now and then, whispering things to Celestia, Luna, Plate, and Inkwell, and shot me winks and supportive smiles when I caught their eyes, just like Armor did.
There was a lot of general looking in my direction. Most of these people had never seen me and probably never heard of me before, so naturally they were very curious about me, and since so few knew me, they naturally took the more entertaining option of finding things out: speculating amongst themselves.
I thought Professor Inkwell, who was sitting on the other side of me from Luna, had a most inspired approach to this: openly not caring. At all.
She had loaded up her plate with appetizers and some pastries, and after giving one an openly scrutinizing look, she would casually flip it in her mouth and chew openly and unabashedly on it.
“So what did you think about the presentation?” I asked her. “I never got a chance to ask if you thought it was any good.”
“It was good,” she said shortly, but forcefully. “It was complicated, but they’ll figure it out soon enough. You handled the questions well too.”
“Ah yeah. I didn’t expect a reporter there,” I said.
“Neither did I, but I was thinking of Wavelength,” Inkwell said.
“Who was Wavelength?”
“The beige mare with the black mane.”
“Oh, her,” I said, recognizing her as one of the two mares who had first entered the room. The strangely confrontational one. “But she didn’t ask anything. At least not after the lecture started.”
“No, but she gave everypony who did the stink eye. Sycophantic little coward,” Inkwell muttered.
I was taken aback by that statement. Especially with how bluntly and openly she said it. “Uhm, is that an appropriate way for a teacher to talk?”
“What are they gonna do, fire me?” Inkwell said, and chuckled. “I’ve been up for review before, and it’s never gone anywhere. Listen to me, somepony whose job is to tell ponies things,” she said, and turned to look at me, forcing her injured eyelid open. “Some ponies are bullies, and use any means to raise themselves over other. Pushing others down and breaking their self-esteem is a favorite way of theirs. Don’t let them hide behind your goodwill. I’m not letting them hide behind mine.”
I nodded, thinking back to some people I had met through the years, then let out a sigh. “Good thing I’m not a teacher. I can’t deal with that stuff. I’m not a people person,” I said.
“Neither am I,” Inkwell said. “Let pony ponies do their stuff, and you stick to yours.”
That sounded a bit iffy. “Do you think Twilight would agree? I mean, she told me about how she was before she went to Ponyville. Princess of Friendship and all that.”
“Making friends doesn’t mean that you’re not an introvert,” Inkwell said, evenly. “It just means that you have friends. How does Twilight relax?”
“Reading books?” I suggested.
“Probably,” Inkwell said. “Friendship would be a fundamentally flawed concept if only extroverts could enjoy it.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” I said, nodding.
“It does. Now, what’s taking so long? I’m hungry.”
—
My consistent use of magic throughout the day had left me a bit drained this evening. This wouldn’t be a problem back in the comfort of Golden Oaks, where I could just go up into my room and snuggle into my bed whether I planned on sleeping or not, but now I was stuck here.
I had started feeling a little guilty at just wanting to leave after Rarity had gone and done such a great job on my dress, but thankfully the dinner was actually invigorating in ways that expensive food often isn’t.
No crustaceans though, which was a shame, because I would finally have been able to open them up myself, and easier than most people, with both magic and metallic limbs.
Individual portions didn’t fill me much, but I just kept ordering more fried sweet potatoes and pieces of exotic fruit, and eventually I started enjoying myself after getting some more energy.
Which was really good because if my tiredness would’ve turned into annoyance and grumpiness, I would’ve felt even less confident when Luna rose up and announced in a deep and strong voice, “Gabrielle Eleanor Desrochers. Please, join us, and present yourself to all gathered here this evening.”
The whole room quieted instantly. Luna strode confidently down the red carpet to the center of the room, in full view of everyone. Which really went without saying. She’s Luna. She strides confidently all the time.
I hesitated for a moment, before I rose and walked after her, slowly and gently so as to not trip over my dress, unintentionally perhaps making me seem dignifiedly un-eager.
I came to a stop right after Luna did, and she turned to face me. I fought down the urge to turn around and face Celestia for a comforting nod, but that was okay, because Armor, Kibitz, and Raven had taken up places in the doorway where I could just see them between Luna’s legs. They gave me encouraging nods, and Armor winked at me.
“Gabrielle Eleanor Desrochers,” Luna said, loudly and clearly so that the whole room could hear, fixing my head towards her. “Deeds you have performed, great in honor and nobility, for our little ponies.”
I kept my head aimed at her, while my eye darted back and forth to see how everyone else in the room reacted. By some miracle, I managed to remember to keep my ears trained forward.
My field of vision was of course very limited, which was clear to everyone as my right socket was covered by an eyepatch, but everyone’s eyes were fixed on me, and most besides Fancy Pants leaned forward a bit and whispered among themselves.
“What has she done?”
“I think her injuries are real.”
“Is she really going to be knighted?”
“She’s so young.”
Luna continued. “You have asked for little, and what have been offered to you have often been rejected with great grace,” she said, gesturing in the air theatrically, as if we were in the halls with the stained glass, and I was on them.
“No mercenary thoughts fueled your actions,” Luna said, settling down and looking straight at me. “It was not for fame and glory, nor wealth and power, that you provided our little ponies your boons of magic and metal.”
I was actually stunned, looking up at with Luna with like a frightened eye. I started out internally dismissing my contributions, thinking that there were only a few ponies, and gryphons, who needed magical prosthetics, but realized that with however many millions of ponies there are in the world, the number of them missing limbs might even be four digits, or even five.
“If you shall not cast your modesty aside, we shall take it from you,” Luna said, in a more casual tone, and smiled at me. “For today at least. Are you ready for your reward?”
I opened my mouth and quickly shut it again. ‘Wait, what do I do? How does this work!?’
I caught sight of Armor frantically waving his forelegs and wings at me. When he saw that I was looking at him, he pointed at Kibitz and Raven. Raven bowed down in front of Kibitz, and Kibitz gently touched her with his horn. They all looked at me, and Armor silently pointed out how Raven placed her hooves and how she held her head.
I gave them a small nod, which Luna might’ve interpreted as in answer to her question.
“Then bow, and receive your reward,” Luna said, kindly.
‘Oh, I guess this is it then.’
I did my best to imitate Raven, placing my right foreleg stretched in front of me and my left folded under my barrel, as I kept my head level above the ground and closed my eye. This presented my prosthesis extra prominently.
Luna gently touched her horn right over the base of my horn.
“Rise, Gabrielle,” she said.
As I did, Luna glanced to the side, nodding at someone, after which Armor’s grandfather, Plate, suddenly appeared with a small wooden box resting on his back, and gave me a small nod, the ends of his mouth ever so slightly pointing upwards.
Luna magicked the box open, and removed a medal from the velour-lined interior, hanging from a silken necklace. It was gold, with a beautiful embossment of the my cutie mark, with a sword and shield behind it, pointing downwards.
Luna lowered the medal over my neck, and said, “I decree you, Gabrielle Eleanor Desrocher, a Knight of Equestria.”
The room was filled with the, to me, still fairly strange sound of equine applause. There was no whooping of cheering, just hooves clopping against each other, with the occasional, “Aha, yes, I say,” “Good show,” or similar comment from the assembled creatures of high society.
“Thank you,” I said, in a low voice towards Luna, who nodded at me, then turned to address the room.
“We declare the ceremony to be over, but we declare the festivities to be taken to their next level,” she said, and turned towards the opening, raised her foreleg dramatically, and said, and I was alert enough to fold my ears as she used the royal Canterlot voice, “REVEAL... THE CAKE!”
—
I like cake well enough, but I’ve never been that much of a fan. You eat it after large meals, when I’ve never had the time to make room in my stomach for another meal. Also, sweetness upon sweetness gets boring. Pastries and cookies are great, because that’s a more sensible concentration of goodness inside some bread or something. Most cakes just coat my mouth with lingering sweetness so that every time I take another bite, it’s like I’m painting another layer of the exact same color over and over. It feels like a waste.
Cakes come in different qualities though. Some doesn’t really have this problem, and this one was top-notch. Like Schwarzwald cake.
It led to the same problem I had a few times back on Earth though. I was lying down in my bed, tired from a long day, with a concentration of sugar in me trying to get me going for a while longer.
“This day felt like two days,” I commented, as I tried struggling out of the dress without damaging it.
“I can imagine,” Celestia said, standing next to the bed.
“Not in a bad way though. There was just a lot of stuff happening.”
“You seemed tired near the end there,” Celestia said, smiling at my attempts at backing out of the dress, before climbing up into the bed with me.
“I was. I still am,” I said, before Celestia gently put her hoof around my barrel, brought me to her, and pulled the dress off with her mouth.
I looked up at her, with a mix of mild amusement and indignation. “Are you gonna tuck me in as well?”
“You are going to have to protest very insistently for me not to,” she said, with a smirk.
“Go ahead,” I said, with a not entirely displeased sigh. “I did say okay to you mothering me.”
“And I’m very happy you did,” she replied, pulling the duvet back, then over me.
“You know,” I started, looking up at Celestia. “That should mean that I can ask you for relationship advice.”
Celestia’s smile partly gave way to mild surprise before it came back. “You are both clever and kind little ponies,” she said. “The journey will not always be pleasant, but I think that if you give it time and thought, you’ll both find out what’s best for the both of you.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “You… know about me and Armor?” I asked.
“I do,” she said, calmly.
“Huh,” I said, shaking away my surprise. “I half expected you to say that it’s a terrible idea. That I’m too young or I haven’t known him or been a pony long enough or something.”
“Perhaps those are all true, or perhaps none of them are. Perhaps I’m biased, but,” Celestia said, and bent down and gently nuzzled my cheek, speaking in a soft voice. “I just know, that if you find love, take care of it, and enjoy it while you can. It’s worth embracing fully, even if you risk losing it forever.”
‘Like that Aerosmith song. Well, she’s right. Even if I lost everyone I cared for, again, it would still be worth it.’
I nuzzled her back, and hugged her as best I could.
“Goodnight, Gabe,” she said, after the hug.
“Goodnight,” I said.
As she closed the door behind her, I began to remove my legs, casting them off into a pile on the bed, and didn’t bother removing my eyepatch as I laid my head on my pillow and began to drift off to sleep, while eyeing the case with my medal in it on the nightstand that I didn't even remember placing there in my exhausted state.
Within a minute of resting my head, I was asleep, and no longer alone.
“She’s right,” the voice said. “Although it’s not as lost as she might think.”
—
My Life As A Bipedal Quadruped Part 3: Mirror Mirror.
I stood on a rich, purple carpet, in a room completely covered in black except for an orb of light centered on me.
“What do you mean, ‘not as lost as she might think’?”
“I mean that we will now reunite,” he said, and I turned around to where the voice had come from.
Then something happened that had never happened before. Rather than sensing the voice as a vague presence in my dream, it was there, he was there, with me, in that room.
The vague silhouette of a large stallion stood in the darkness, then stepped into the light with me.
In Equestria, I had been attacked by monstrous wolves, almost eaten by a dragon, trapped in a tale of trickery and violence, and other unpleasant and rousing experiences. They all paled next to seeing what I saw next. I involuntarily let out a gasp, and took a step away from the large, dark shape, with the angled headguard partially surrounding that wicked-looking, crooked horn, the black mane flowing like eldritch shadows, and the glowing green eyes with their swirling tendrils of dark power.
The Dark King, Sombra.
We stood there, regarding each other for some time. He with a look of effortless superiority, and I with a look of horror and building realization.
Then his expression softened a bit, and he put his hoof to his chest and did a small bow.
“Gabrielle Eleanor Desrochers of Earth. Daughter of the Geats and Franks. Healer and seeker. Inventor and benefactor. Struggler and victor. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person,” he said, then gestured around the dark room. “Such as it is.”
My head started spinning, wondering if it was really him, how he could be back, and terrible mistake I might’ve made to bring him here.
As my lower lip started quivering, I did what I always did to steady myself when I was alone with something terrifying, I inquired.
“W–what are you doing? Why are you here?”
Sombra’s expression softened a bit further, and he lowered himself closer to my eye level, and softly put a steel-clad hoof on my cheek.
“Gabe. We’ve known each other for so long. There is no reason to be scared of me,” he said.
“Aren’t…” I started, searching for the words. “You… you’re Sombra, the King of the Crystal Empire.”
He shook his head. “No, I am not,” he said. “I am the former King of Equestria. Another Equestria.”
Realization dawned on me. “You’re Celestia’s lover. From the mirror world. You took in all the evil and corrupted yourself to save Celestia and Luna, and the… other Celestia and Luna.”
He nodded, then rose up again. “I did,” he said.
“Then… how are you here?” I asked. “The mirror was destroyed.”
“Indeed, but parts of the magic still functions,” he said. “You saw me, when you first came to this castle, and I saw you.”
“It was… it was you all along?” I asked.
He nodded his head. “Yes. I’ve been projecting myself into your dreams for months.”
“How?” I asked.
He chuckled. “When one is the closest friend of the alicorn of dreams for a thousand years, one tends to pick up a few tricks. Why do you think your Luna never figured out how to interact with your dreams properly? She would’ve found out everything.”
I shook my head. Of course that made sense. When Luna was Nightmare Moon, the alternate Luna had a thousand year stint as a “good” pony. “But why?” I asked.
“To train you. To prepare you,” Sombra said. “I need your help.”
“Help? With what?” I asked.
“My great plan,” he said, and gave me a mournful look. “And I am very sorry for this, but I will not leave you a choice in the matter.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, and took another step back. “What plan? ”
Sombra closed his eyes and let out a sigh. “Don’t let my demeanor fool you, my friend. I am still consumed by the great evil of the dark sisters… or, former dark sisters. I am here mostly for ambitious reasons,” he said, and opened his eyes. “On that note, we should get to work.”
I woke up, in a sense. Against my will, I opened my eye, and sat up in my bed, completely without control of myself.
—
Celestia stood by the great window of Luna’s quarters, losing herself in the beauty of the night sky with a small smile on her lips.
“Appreciating the sight, sister dear?” Luna asked, as she walked up beside her.
“Very much,” Celestia said. “It is a wonderful night in so many ways.”
Luna smiled and stood next to Celestia, gently nuzzling her neck. “We are happy for you,” she said.
Celestia rested her head on top of her sister’s. “You’re not jealous?” she asked, with a hint of teasing.
“In a sense,” Luna said. “But your need for love is great, and we do not begrudge you finding more besides ourselves.”
“I just…” Celestia started. “I wanted something more. After him.”
Luna put a wing around her sister. “May it last for a long time,” she said. “And how many mysteries are there in the world, and beyond our world besides? You may not have lost him forever.”
“I know, Luna,” Celestia said, her smile becoming forlorn. “It just hurts too much to hope.”
Luna let out a sigh. “I will be here for you when the pain becomes great, and now, so will Gabrielle.”
Celestia smile slowly brightened again. “Thank you,” she said.
The sisters stood there for a while, enjoying each other's presence. They were about to break away, when a familiar-feeling burst of magic resonated throughout the castle.
Luna’s eyes opened, then narrowed in suspicion at this intrusion.
Celestia’s eyes however, were full of despair. She held onto her sister a second longer, instinctively hoping that her presence would fend away all evil in the world.
“No,” she pleaded in a weak voice, as tears immediately swelled up in her eyes, then took off with her sister through the castle halls.
—
I had the double sense of sluggishly walking in my physical body, while at the same time standing next to Sombra in my dream, seeing what I was physically seeing as if it was projected against the dark backdrop.
My physical form, under the control of Sombra, had attached my limbs and stumbled out into the hallway. A guard was patrolling the starlit corridor, and stood at attention when he saw me.
“Madam? Are you alright?” he asked.
I reared up and pawed at Sombra’s form in the dream. “Don’t hurt him, please!”
He didn’t look down at me, but was entirely focused on what was projected in front of us. “I will not,” he reassured me.
My body sluggishly turned towards the guard, and when he got a good look at my eye, he let out a gasp and tightened the grip of his spear.
My body raised its prosthetic foreleg and blasted the guard, sending him skidding a few steps across the carpet, very much unconscious.
“What do you want? Why are you doing this?” I asked Sombra, as my body walked up the unconscious guard, and jerkily dragged him by his tail into my room, hiding him.
“I only want one thing,” he said, calmly. “Celestia. My love.”
“How does this help you get Celestia?” I asked, as my body walked down the dark hallway like a zombie.
“I cannot open the portal from my side,” he said. “I need an agent over here.”
“But what do you need me for?” I asked.
Still keeping his eyes focused in front of me, Sombra nonetheless let his concentrated expression soften a bit, and put a foreleg around me. “I suppose if anypony deserves to hear my plan, it’s you,” he said. “I need help from this side. I needed someone skilled and powerful enough at enchantments to reactivate the portal between our worlds.”
“But there are lots of ponies who’re good at enchanting,” I said, taking refuge in questions to help ignore the feeling of helplessness as my body walked on its own accord.
“While the linking magic isn’t powerful enough to let me through,” Sombra said. “It is powerful enough to bind the counterparts of two ponies together. If I control the body of anypony on this side, which is very difficult, believe me, I also have to control their counterpart.
“It is difficult enough to control one pony. Very few of the most powerful mages in the world can do this, and doing it with more than one individual at the same time is simply not possible,” Sombra said, and finally looked down at me with a soft expression. “But you… you’re different.”
“... I don’t have a counterpart where you’re from,” I said, as we reached Celestia’s quarters.
“Correct,” Sombra said, and focused again in the image in front of us. “Strangers, we call your kind. Those who can move freely between parallel worlds, their crossings leaving little in their wakes.”
“And why do you want to open a portal to your world?” I asked.
“So that our world will blend together, and Celestia and I will never be separated again,” he said.
My pupil shrunk to a pinprick. “But that will destroy everything!” I shouted.
“Or save everything. Redeem it, rebirth it, unite it. It depends on how you want to see it,” Sombra said, calmly. “The worlds will collide, and fuse. All ponies, and all people, everywhere, will be united with their counterparts, except for you of course. Only one thing is certain to me, Celestia and I will be reunited. We might not be the same ponies we are now, but we will be together.”
“Please, no,” I said, burying my muzzle in his coat as tears welled up in my eye, as we walked into the room with the shrub and the mirror shard, with the small note hanging from it. “Don’t.”
I felt him put his foreleg around me again. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I hammered twice at his barrel with my prosthesis, doing absolutely nothing in the dream realm, as I let out a small sob.
“It’s time,” he said.
I turned my reddened eye towards the image showing my body’s sight, and saw myself gently pick up the mirror shard in my metallic hoof.
I felt my body channel magic through its horn, weaving an elaborate enchantment to apply to the magic already oozing from the mirror shard.
“STOP!”
My body sluggishly turned towards the entrance of the room, where Celestia and Luna stood.
Luna stood wide legged, eyes ablaze, while Celestia’s eyes were, like my own in the dream, filled with tears.
“Sombra, my love,” she said, taking a step forward. “Please, stop this.”
“Celestia, my light” my body answered in a strange voice. “I know you will try and stop me. You love your little ponies too much to allow this, but it will all be better soon.”
“Sombra. Please,” Celestia said again. “I don’t want this.”
“I know you don’t, for now, but it will all change soon,” my body said, melancholically. “You love your little ponies too much for this, and perhaps afterwards… I will as well again.”
“You will let her GO!” Luna shouted, and flung herself towards my body, only to slam into a shimmering barrier of magic surrounding me.
“I will indeed,” my body said. “After I’m finished here. Don’t fight, Luna. The two of you together are definitely my superior in combat, but you will not figure out how I nullified your powers before it’s too late.”
Celestia reared up and pressed herself against the barrier. “Sombra, please,” she pleaded again. “We’ll find another way. We’ll help you. We’ll bring you back here and purge you, but I cannot let you do this.”
“Would that this wasn't the only way,” my body said, and turned to properly look at Celestia. “I’d rather travel here, robbed of all my powers and chained in a dungeon, if it only meant being close to you.”
My body turned back toward towards the mirror shard, and infused it with the magic it had been preparing.
A purple glow exploded from it, sounding like a bomb had gone off.
I was suddenly yanked from my dream world, and found myself back in my own body, fully awake.
I wasn’t back in control though. Whatever Sombra did had stuck me in a sort of loop, where I was physically locked in place as magic energy flowed out of me into the mirror shard. So I could just stand there, straining every muscle in an attempt to move, and gritting my teeth at the painful sensation of having Starswirl levels of magic pouring out of my horn.
In front of the mirror-shard opened a doorway-sized portal of swirling shades of purple and black, and out of it emerged a dark shape, which quickly coalesced into a shadowy image of Sombra.
Celestia closed her eyes, and focused a blast of magic against the shield. It held up as if it was a pebble thrown against a brick wall, though it still shook my teeth from the shockwave.
“I love you too much not to do this, Celestia,” he said. “We will be happy together now, and you know it.”
“We will,” she said, and opened her eyes to look at Sombra’s shadowy image, tears streaming down her face. “But with all my heart, please don’t do this.”
“Nopony will be hurt,” he said, and gently put a foreleg over my body, still painfully paralyzed, as Luna lowered her stance further and snarled at him. “I’m less sure about our human here, but I’ll try and keep her as safe as I can.”
I tried begging him to stop this, but all that came out was a whimper.
“Nooo!” a panicked voice sounded from the doorway, and Studded Armor flew towards us, completely unhindered by the shield, and grabbed me mid-flight in his forelegs.
He held me tight as he tried pushing me away from the portal which was clearly sucking the magic out of me, but I was magically tethered to the portal by my horn, and we immediately slowed down when we got more than a few steps away from it.
We came to a stop when we reached the magical barrier, which also hindered me, not just Celestia and Luna. Armor fell to the ground, skidding slowly towards the portal from holding me in his forelegs.
The image of Sombra looked down at us. “Brave, little pony,” he said. “But that will not stop anything. I have prepared too long for this.”
Armor slamming into me had shooked me out of my physical paralysis, but I still couldn’t stop the magic flowing through my horn.
In front of the portal, Armor and I stood up, him standing protectively over me as we glared at Sombra with hurt expressions. Any moment now and it would be too late to stop it.
Suddenly it came to me. Sombra was trying to bridge the worlds together, which needed someone on each side trying to open a portal. If there was no one on this side, there would be no portal.
I hugged Armor’s leg, but didn’t wait long enough to share a last look with him before I rushed towards the portal.
Celestia and Luna let out gasps of horror, and Sombra’s eyes widened in surprise.
I jumped through the portal towards the swirling abyss, and just as my horn passed through, an ominous ripple went across the surface, and a great wind started flowing from the room and into the portal.
I didn’t get to find out what happens when you fall into the abyss just yet, as Armor had rushed after me.
He grabbed me by my metallic foreleg, and tried hauling me back.
When I passed through the portal, I felt its control of my magic loosen. I could kill the portal at any time, but Armor was now poking through it, trying to haul me back in.
“Let go, Armor!” I shouted over the wind.
He didn’t answer, instead he just shook his head, his mane flowing from the wind in front of his face partially obscuring the desperate expression and his tear-filled eyes.
“You have to complete it, Gabe!” the shadow of Sombra shouted. “Close the portal now, and he dies!”
“Gabe!” Celestia called. “Don’t do it! Come back!”
“Do not let her go, private!” Luna shouted.
My magic reserves were nearing their limits. I didn’t know what was going to happen first, the world colliding, me passing out, or Armor losing his grip.
I desperately looked around, trying to come up with any idea of what to do, when I finally noticed that Armor was holding me by my prosthesis.
Steeling my resolve, I called out. “Armor, pull!”
Over the howling noise of the wind, Armor slowly managed to start pulling me towards the Equestrian side of the portal.
“Keep going!” I called to him. “We’re almost there!”
Just as his hooves cleared the edge of the portal, I looked him in the eye, painfully.
I spun my prosthetic hoof around a full turn, readying my arcano-dispersive stun gun. "I'm sorry," I said.
"No!" he shouted over the collective gasp in the room, and jumped forward into the portal with me before I could fire.
I saw Celestia and Luna, pressing against the magic barrier, faces locked in horror, and Sombra, looking at me with a deeply wounded expression.
Armor and I fell into the abyss, swirling shapes and impossible colors overtaking our senses. The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was Sombra, being sucked into the collapsing portal, dignifiedly unmoving, and his tear-filled gaze locked on Celestia.